Reaching the World Through America’s Prisons (November 30, 2025)

Our annual theme is “Making the Case,” where our focus is on helping various groups understand the hidden asset we have in the indigenous Church in America’s prisons. We are working to help four different groups understand this potential: 1) The prisoners themselves; 2) people who go into prison to do ministry from the outside; 3) churches who can welcome the formerly incarcerated into their communities; 4) missions organizations who are looking for qualified missionaries to deploy to unreached people groups, either overseas or to diaspora who have moved to America.

We are happy to report progress in each of these areas. For example, we have helped diaspora ministries connect with each other, and even helped launch three diaspora coalitions (Portland, Dallas, Houston). Also, we know that former prisoners are actively reaching diaspora people. One of our friends is involved in a church made up of immigrants from a Far East country who are now living in Colorado Springs.

So we were happily surprised to hear a connection between this same Far East country and the prison work of our colleague, Dee Peterson at Prisoners for Christ in Washington. At our last Zoom meeting of The Empowerment Network, Dee reported how one of her students had started the 16-module Capstone Curriculum and then was deported before finishing the program. He asked Dee about the possibility of finishing in his new country and Dee put together a plan together to do just that through videoconferencing. But Dee knew that one of the essential ingredients to the success of this training is that students learn together in a cohort, not through independent study.

Just like the 12 disciples learned from one another under Jesus’ teaching, so Capstone students learn from being in a group who have conversation together about the application of the material.

So Dee challenged him to find a cohort to go through the training, and he found other people who were excited about the training! So, through this group, God is reaching into this Asian country that is populated by unreached people groups. We believe this is just the beginning of a way for the Gospel to be spread around the world from America’s prisons.